Big Fish
by resurrection via erection
Summary: When boredom threatens to get Evan kicked out of the perfect town, what's the one thing that can convince everyone to let him stay? Chapter one now up!
1. Introduction

**Summary: When boredom threatens to get Evan kicked out of the perfect town, what's the one thing that can convince everyone to let him stay?**

**"Big Fish"  
Introduction**

The town of BackWood was, in a word, perfect. It had orchards of every fruit imaginable, an upscale Nookington's, flower gardens everywhere, and very happy animal inhabitants, to the credit of its four human civilians.

And one of those human civilians was, in a word, bored. While the other three were happy redecorating their mansions, visiting the town's private island, staring at their glittering statues and finding new places to put their tissue boxes, he was more interested in finding ways to make the animals of BackWood tick. Little did he know his antics would bring his time in the perfect town to a shuddering halt when the mayor says the proverbial last straw is drawn. How will the one defect that keeps BackWood incomplete (the local museum that's missing one Big Fish, maybe?) help him stay with his only real friends in the town he's worked on for a year? As the mayor once said, in BackWood, opportunity is everything.


	2. Chapter 1

**"Big Fish"  
Chapter One**

Dawn was just breaking over the seashell-ridden beach of BackWood. Fish swam lazily by the shore, fat from the unpolluted water and happy because no one had been fishing for run-of-the-mill fish for over a few months. The inside of Able Sisters Design started to light up slowly, rays of sunlight coming through the windows. Over to the right one acre the trees in a fruit orchard seemed to stretch their branches towards the sun.

The sunlight reached a boy sitting against the trunk of a pear tree. Pears were his favorite, and since they were not native to BackWood, he had to travel three towns over until he found a single one.

Leaning his head back, he knew it was totally worth it. His eyes scanned each tree in the orchard. The cherries will have to be picked soon, he thought, seeing how the fruit was about to fall off the trees because it was so heavy and ripe. Very soon.

His gaze turned to the ocean in front of him. This was his favorite orchard, just because it was so close to the beautiful view. He could see the lighthouse that he had gone into every day for a week to turn on as a favor from the mayor, the clothes store with the two sisters who got flustered every time he walked in and blushed furiously when he talked to them, and mostly, the pinks and yellows and blues streaked across the sky, product of the beautiful sunrise. Definitely his favorite orchard.

He couldn't believe that a little over a year ago he had come here with nothing. He found himself getting laughed at where ever he turned, and no one would take him seriously. In fact, when he stepped off that train into BackWood he had exactly 1,000 Bells, and now he and his friends dominated the whole town. _Who's laughing now?_

Smiling, he turned to the journal in his lap. He didn't know why he had brought it this morning, though reading it would give him something to do while the rest of the town woke up.

He opened to the first page. It read:

_10:00 p.m._

_I paid off the rent on my house today! Now I own in completely. I didn't get what Tom Nook said about making deposits every week, though. I had the 17,000 Bells less than an hour after I had finished working in his store._

_Oh, everyone here thinks my name is so odd. They're the ones with weird names; Evan is perfectly normal._

His smile widened. It felt like forever ago, but he could still remember Nook giving him instructions on how to use the Gyroid in front of his house. Now Nook called him his best customer and would bend over backwards if Evan wanted him to.

Then, a page more in the middle of the journal:

_7 p.m._

_I caught my first bee today. It was hard and I got stung seven or eight times, but hey, I still caught that darn bee._

_Also, I convinced Taurus to move to BackWood. I miss not seeing her every day from where I used to live. I hope she doesn't mind that I live with a bunch of animals (not talking about Will and Brigg, ha-ha)._

_The bee was the half-way point in my insect collection, and Brigg says he finally dug up a Petra right wing, which finishes up the fossil collection. We might actually complete the museum soon (!!), though I still have to work on fish and that pesky fossil-fish. Have to work on that._

Evan frowned. He still hadn't caught that "pesky fossil-fish", and it was the only hole in all of his collections, the only thing keeping him from having a perfect museum. He was reminded of this almost every day by his neighbors and only other humans in the whole town, Brigg, Taurus, and Will. Evan had eventually given up on finding the fossil-fish at all when the task proved itself impossible.

He shook his head and turned to one of the newest entries.

_11:30 a.m._

_Due to an unexpected turn in the stalk market, I've finally paid off my mansion! I rushed to the bank and back to Nook's with Will right behind me and only beat him by a second. Now there's a glittery gold statue of me and a not-so-glittery silver statue of him by the train station. I made sure to let him know that I don't care, though._

_Now I'm helping Taurus pay off the final few hundred-thous of her mansion. Brigg hasn't shown any interest in paying off his debt for his second story, though. All he does is lounge around and eat candy._

This made Evan laugh. Months later, Brigg finally paid off his last loan, but to his dismay he didn't get a statue erected in his honor, just 10 Bells instead.

The sound of bells chiming from the clock tower interrupted his thoughts, telling him it was now 6 o'clock. Evan and his friends worked for a week on that town melody, and when they were done it sounded like the chorus of one of their favorite songs. Now, though, it was starting to get on Evan's nerves. He started humming another tune, envisioning which notes were which and where the rests would go.

Still humming, he stood up, put the journal in his pocket, and started heading towards home. He passed another, bigger, fruit orchard and a house with no lights on. He paused to knock and see if he could wake anyone up, but the message they left on the door said, "I'm not in right now!" His humming stopped a beat.

Evan was at a blank for a second but then remembered today was morning aerobics day for BackWood. _What fun._ He wasn't planning on participating, just like he hadn't last year.

He kept walking until he could hear the perky aerobics music, and Cooper's voice followed shortly.

"All right, jumping jacks! On three! One, two-!"

Evan stepped into the clearing that was the wishing well just as everyone started to jump up and down, arms flailing. He had to hide a laugh as he nodded to the officer, which brought a raised eyebrow in his direction from the dog. Still walking, Evan tipped his imaginary hat to the ladies who were still doing jumping jacks. They all giggled and their hands immediately fluttered to the hems of their shirts, fixing wrinkles, flattening their fur or feathers, touching their ears. Some of them started blushing madly.

In a second he was out of view, the ladies regained their posture, and Cooper had carried on with arm windmills. Only the old mayor still had his eyes on him, and even though Evan couldn't see, he was glaring at him through his bifocals.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The lights were on when Evan got to Brigg's mansion, and he wasn't surprised. He walked in without knocking, finding Brigg and Will on one sofa hunched over their NES controllers, and Taurus sleeping on another.

"So the all-nighter hasn't ended yet?" he said, kicking off his shoes at the door. Brigg's first floor was decorated in Mario items, perfectly matching with his Mario mural and block flooring and furniture ranging from the famous green pipe to the fire flower. NES systems lined the back wall but weren't visible from the front door by the red sofas placed in front of them. The Happy Room Academy had tried to tell Brigg time after time that his room would have a perfect rating if it weren't for the flaws in the back of the room, to which Brigg replied laughingly, HRA be damned, he was too much of a video game junkie to let his room be perfect.

"Dude, what time is it? My eyes started hurting like three hours ago." Brigg didn't bother look up from the TV screen.

"That was when Taurus passed out too, right?" Evan sat down on the couch next to the sleeping girl. She lifted her head, looked around at the room sleepily, smiled and laid her head back down on Evan's lap. Not soon after her breathing started in a regular rhythm again. "It's a little after six in the morning."

"Only six? Oh, that's right, you went on your 'morning walk.'" Will paused the Balloon Fight game they were playing. "Wreck any havoc?"

Evan was playing with the hair on the person's head in his lap. "Just pushed someone sleeping in front of their house a few acres. Nothing you would find exciting, naturally."

Will laughed and turned back to the NES. "What you find exciting and what I find exciting are two entirely different things, my man."

"And yet we're friends anyway," said Brigg, face lighting up as he mashed buttons on the controller faster, finally pumping his fist and shouting "Ha! Beat you, fourth time in a row!"

"First four times tonight," grumbled Will. "Do you plan on waking up Taur or was that just going to be aftermath of your shouting and jumping up and down?"

"Yeah, yeah." Brigg's voice reduced to mumbling. "_Four times_ in a row!"

Will and Evan were about to tell him again to shut up but there was a knock at the door. All three exchanged a confused look. They had made a point a while ago not to get involved with the animals in BackWood unless they absolutely had to, and the last time any of them had talked to the animals had been at a certain cherry blossom festival, where Will, Evan, Brigg and Taurus had gotten a little too drunk and had to be escorted home. None of them could think of who would be knocking at their door, and so early in the morning as well.

The knocking got louder. Taurus sat up and said, yawning, "Is anyone going to get that or should I?"

"I will," Evan said quickly, getting up and hurrying across the massive house. To the anonymous knocking, he said, "Shut up, I'm coming!"

When he opened the door he was surprised to see the mayor standing there, still in his workout clothes from the morning aerobics. Evan ignored the serious expression on his face and said, smirking, "G'morning, mister mayor. Nice getup you've got there."

"Evan, I would stop joking around if I were you. We need to talk."


End file.
